Is a virtual tour worth it for a very small business?

Sometimes, and the honest test is the floor. The smallest tour we build is four stations and the minimum is €160, because below four it is a set of 360 photographs rather than a walkthrough. Delivered tours of a six-station seafront shop and a four-station bakery branch exist and were the right size for those premises. If four photographs of your place is more than it is worth showing, that is a real answer and you should keep the money.

Should I shoot the tour before or after a renovation?

After, once the space is finished and furnished. A tour is true of one state of a building, and the mid-renovation version is the one that ends up on the internet permanently. If only part of the building is being reworked, shoot the rest now and add the changed rooms afterwards — a refresh is priced from the rate card on what actually changed, and stations that have not changed are not re-charged.

Can a virtual tour give me the dimensions of a room?

No. Nothing in a 360° photograph establishes a measurement you could design against, order to, or put in a lease, and any supplier telling you otherwise should be asked to state the accuracy and how it was verified. If dimensions are what you need, buy a drawn floor plan — €0.60 per square metre with a €45 minimum — or a 3D model, which is quoted per job. Those are separate products from the walkthrough.

Do you shoot 360° panoramas from a drone?

No. There is no 360° drone in the studio and there will not be one until the equipment is here, so there is no aerial position a visitor can stand in and look around from. We shoot conventional aerial stills and video at €15 per photograph, and that has been flown on one delivered project. If a sky station is a requirement, we will tell you before you book that we are the wrong studio for that part of the job.

Will a tour bring me more customers?

We do not know, and we will not put a number on it. We have no access to your enquiries or your bookings, and the percentages that circulate in this industry could not be traced to any checkable source. What a tour does reliably is let somebody see a specific space before they travel to it or commit to it. Whether that is worth the price for your business is a judgement only you can make, with the rate card in front of you.

When a virtual tour is the wrong purchase

Ahmed Pemaj 8 min read

An empty room with freshly plastered white walls, unfilled door openings and no skirting, floors and fittings not yet installed

A virtual tour is the wrong purchase more often than this industry admits. If the building is not finished, if what you actually need is a measurement, if the space is deliberately private or full of people, if the layout changes every few weeks, if you are moving within the year, or if there is nowhere on your site for the tour to live — wait, buy something else, or keep the money. None of this is a negotiating position. It is what we would say on the phone.

Six situations where we would tell you not to buy

1. The building is not finished

A tour is a photograph of one state of a place. Shot mid-renovation, it dates on the day the work ends, and the version of your premises that is on the internet forever is the one with the scaffolding in it. Wait until the building is finished and furnished. If a section is being reworked later, shoot the rest now and add those stations afterwards — a refresh prices only what actually changed, and the stations that have not changed are not re-charged.

2. What you actually need is a measurement

This is the most common mismatch we see. A tour lets somebody see a space. It does not let them measure one. Nothing in a 360° photograph establishes a dimension you could design against, order furniture to, or put in a lease — and we will not claim otherwise, which puts us in a small minority in this field.

If dimensional certainty is the point, the answer is a drawn floor plan at €0.60 per square metre with a €45 minimum, or a 3D model, which is quoted rather than listed because it does not follow from a station count. Both are things we make. Neither of them is a walkthrough, and buying the walkthrough will not get you either. The full version of this argument is in what a tour cannot show you.

3. The space is deliberately private, or full of people

A 360° photograph has no crop. Everything in every direction is in the frame: faces, screens, paperwork on a desk, a patient area, a process on a factory floor you would not put on a public page. There is no framing away from it and there is no reflex fix afterwards — removing things from a panorama is retouching work on every affected station.

For clinics, back offices, secure areas and any room where people are the content, the honest answer is often that those rooms should not be captured at all, and that a tour of the parts that can be shown is a smaller tour than you were planning. That is a legitimate outcome. It is not a reason to shoot everything and sort it out later.

4. The layout changes every few weeks

An event space reconfigured for every booking, a pop-up, a showroom re-merchandised monthly, a gallery between hangs. The tour will be true of exactly one arrangement, and the arrangement it is true of will be the one nobody is currently selling. If the changing layout is itself the product, what you need is photography you can re-shoot cheaply, not a build that has to be rebuilt each time.

5. You are moving within the year

Obvious, and it still happens. A tour of premises you are leaving has a residual value of nothing, and there is no discount for shooting the new place afterwards, because it is a different building and a different job. Wait for the move.

6. There is nowhere for it to live

The tour is a folder of files that runs on your own domain. That is its strength and it is also the constraint: somebody has to put it on the page people actually land on, and somebody has to send the link in replies. If your site is a single page you do not control, if nobody in the organisation can add a link to it, or if the tour would sit behind three clicks from the footer, it will be seen by almost nobody. Distribution is not something we sell, and buying a tour will not create it.

And one thing we are asked for that we cannot do

360° from the air. There is no 360° drone in this studio, so there is no aerial station a visitor can stand in and look around from. What we shoot is conventional aerial stills and video, priced at €15 per photograph, and that has been flown on exactly one delivered project. If a sky station is the requirement, we are the wrong studio for that part of the job and we will say so before you book rather than after.

The floor, and what it is there for

The smallest tour we build is four stations, which is where the €160 minimum comes from. Below four it is a set of 360 photographs rather than a walkthrough — a different product, priced differently. If four photographs of your premises is more than the place is worth showing, that is a real answer and you should take it. We would rather publish the floor than talk somebody past it.

Situations where a tour is the wrong purchase, and what to consider instead
Situation	What we would say instead
Mid-renovation, or opening in three months	Wait until it is finished and furnished. Add the reworked rooms later; unchanged stations are not re-charged.
You need dimensions to design or lease against	A drawn floor plan at €0.60 per square metre, minimum €45, or a 3D model quoted per job. Not a walkthrough.
Rooms full of people, patients or confidential material	Capture only the parts that can be public, and accept a smaller tour. Removing content from a panorama is work on every station.
Layout changes every few weeks	Photography you can cheaply repeat, and one tour of the fixed shell if the shell is worth showing.
Moving premises within the year	Wait. There is no credit for shooting the old building first.
Nobody can put a link on the site	Fix that first. A tour nobody reaches is a folder nobody opens.
A competitor has one and you feel behind	Work out what question your visitors keep asking you. If a tour does not answer it, it will not help.

Situations where a tour is the wrong purchase, and what to consider instead

What we cannot tell you either way

Whether it will pay for itself. We do not see your bookings, your enquiries or your conversion, and every percentage circulating in this industry traces back to a marketing page, a citation of a citation, or nothing at all — we catalogued them in the statistics we will not repeat. What we can give you before you spend anything is a station count and a fixed price, from the published rate card on pricing. The judgement stays yours.

When it is the right purchase

The rooms genuinely differ and the difference costs money — room types in a hotel, units in a development, capsules against beds.
People travel to reach it, and the journey is long enough that they want to know what they are committing to.
The space has to be understood before arrival — a campus, a site somebody must learn before they work in it, a building with a route through it.
You have stock you want seen without arranging a viewing, and the stock stays put for a season or more.
Somebody keeps asking you the same question about the layout, and you keep answering it by describing a room down a phone line.

Questions people ask

Is a virtual tour worth it for a very small business?: Sometimes, and the honest test is the floor. The smallest tour we build is four stations and the minimum is €160, because below four it is a set of 360 photographs rather than a walkthrough. Delivered tours of a six-station seafront shop and a four-station bakery branch exist and were the right size for those premises. If four photographs of your place is more than it is worth showing, that is a real answer and you should keep the money.
Should I shoot the tour before or after a renovation?: After, once the space is finished and furnished. A tour is true of one state of a building, and the mid-renovation version is the one that ends up on the internet permanently. If only part of the building is being reworked, shoot the rest now and add the changed rooms afterwards — a refresh is priced from the rate card on what actually changed, and stations that have not changed are not re-charged.
Can a virtual tour give me the dimensions of a room?: No. Nothing in a 360° photograph establishes a measurement you could design against, order to, or put in a lease, and any supplier telling you otherwise should be asked to state the accuracy and how it was verified. If dimensions are what you need, buy a drawn floor plan — €0.60 per square metre with a €45 minimum — or a 3D model, which is quoted per job. Those are separate products from the walkthrough.
Do you shoot 360° panoramas from a drone?: No. There is no 360° drone in the studio and there will not be one until the equipment is here, so there is no aerial position a visitor can stand in and look around from. We shoot conventional aerial stills and video at €15 per photograph, and that has been flown on one delivered project. If a sky station is a requirement, we will tell you before you book that we are the wrong studio for that part of the job.
Will a tour bring me more customers?: We do not know, and we will not put a number on it. We have no access to your enquiries or your bookings, and the percentages that circulate in this industry could not be traced to any checkable source. What a tour does reliably is let somebody see a specific space before they travel to it or commit to it. Whether that is worth the price for your business is a judgement only you can make, with the rate card in front of you.